The GOP has focused on Jaczko's decision to abandon a plan for nuclear storage in Nevada. |
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House Republicans included measures to revive the Yucca project in their 2011 spending bill in February, but they were dropped from the final deal in early April. As a result, Simpson said, Jaczko took advantage of the situation.

“I understand that Jaczko was running around telling people: ‘See, Congress doesn’t support it. They didn’t put any funding in for it.’ Which was not our intent at all,” he said. “We’ve got to take that argument away.”

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The fiscal 2012 DOE and NRC spending proposal from House appropriators would put $35 million toward reviving the Yucca Mountain project, including $10 million to the NRC for continuing the agency’s review of the repository’s licensing application.

“Many people feel that the chairman is stalling,” Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), chairman of the Appropriations panel that oversees the NRC and the Energy Department, said at a hearing earlier this year. “And there’s a feeling that here in the House, we may put forth a bill to require the NRC to make a decision by a certain date.”

It hasn’t helped Jaczko that two Republican commissioners, William Ostendorff and Kristine Svinicki, have publicly opposed the NRC’s actions to close Yucca.

Not to be left out, Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee aggressively engaged Jaczko on the disclosure of technical documents associated with Yucca Mountain.

Initially, the NRC would provide only heavily redacted copies of the documents because, Jaczko said, they may be incomplete and, should they become public, could bias him and the other commissioners on the findings. But a majority of NRC commissioners decided to buck the chairman and give unredacted copies to the committee.

Even Jaczko’s decisions concerning the nuclear crisis in Japan couldn’t catch him a break with Republicans in Congress.

Less than a week after the Fukushima incident began in March, Jaczko took to the airwaves to advise Americans within 50 miles of the plant to evacuate, even though the Japanese government had recommended only a 12-mile zone.

At the time, White House spokesman Jay Carney, under heavy questioning from the press corps, insisted the difference “is not about the quality of information” from Japan. But the discrepancy created confusion since it was the first time advice from the U.S. to American citizens in Japan differed from the Japanese government’s advice.

Several environmental groups as well as many lawmakers have used the 50-mile recommendation as a new rule of thumb to assess the risk and evacuation procedures necessary for nuclear power plants in the U.S., but Jaczko has repeatedly said he remains comfortable with the decision he made, given the information his agency had at the time.

But as a result, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who is also investigating Yucca Mountain, asked the NRC to turn over documents detailing how it came up with the 50-mile recommendation.

So far, the agency has taken more than a month to respond, requiring Issa’s office to grudgingly give extensions.

Issa and Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are also going after Jaczko for declaring emergency authority during the Japanese crisis without consulting the other commissioners.

“I am concerned that any effort by you to declare an emergency has been less than ideal,” Inhofe wrote in a letter to Jaczko, adding, “especially given your commitment to openness and transparency.”

Josh Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, lauded Jaczko’s record at NRC, especially on safety. “Chairman Jaczko has provided a steady hand at NRC in a time of great uncertainty for the nuclear sector,” Freed told POLITICO. “He’s done a very good job reminding the American public that nuclear energy in the U.S. is safe.”

Over a billion dollars has been spent by our governent on the Yucca Mountain project and the result is a political football. Legislateive road blocks by environmentalists, anti-nukes, pandering Nevada "statesmen" and appointed executive branch lakeys have resulted in a massive waste of money and a nuclear storage posture that is dangerous to many of our urban areas.

Jaczko Needs To Go!!!! What the administration is doing to the Yucca Mountain Project is completely corrupt!!!

Dirty Harry "The War is Lost" Reid planted Gregory Jaczko (his former Science Advisor and he also worked for anti-nuke Ed Markey) on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (after holding up ~100 Bush appointees until Bush was forced to cave) and then pushed for him to be the Chairman of the NRC under Obama SPECIFICALLY so he could derail the NRC Review of the YMP License Application from the inside.

In addition, he got Steven Chu to flip-flop his position on the YMP (after signing with the other National Lab Leads that the YMR was the path to pursue) in order to gain appointment to the Secretary of Energy job (... So much for "Sound Science"...). Further, the sitting NRC Commissioners all had to agree not to challenge DOE's pulling of the License Application during their confirmation hearings in order to be confirmed.

All of these players and obstructionists are in violation of the LAW!!! Reid, Waxman, Jaczko, Chu, Berkley, Heller ALL need to be thrown out of their jobs… I’d even go further and have them arrested for violating FEDERAL LAW.

Further, the ongoing BRC effort is just one big stall tactic!!! Otherwise, the BRC members would have been permitted to include the Yucca Mountain Repository in their evaluation. I also do not buy into the allegation that the people of Nevada do not want the repository. Informal polls show 70 percent of Nevadans to be in favor of the state negotiating with the federal government to ascertain our safety concerns and determine what benefits might be available.

The NRC needs to be forced to release an unredacted version of the Post-Closure Safety Evaluation Report (SER Vol. 3) to the public so the people know what is going on... BTW -- Ask yourself this: Why would a redacted version of the Safety Evaluation Report be issued if it agreed with Harry Reid's position??? It wouldn't!!!! If the NRC's safety determination supported this administration's desire to shutdown the Yucca Mountain Project, they would be beating that drum like crazy!!!

The detritus of the nuclear age includes 52,000 tons (47,000 metric tons) of spent fuel from commercial, military, and research reactors, as well as 91 million gallons (345 million liters) of radioactive waste from plutonium processing. Most reactors lie east of the Mississippi River, guaranteeing a cross-country trip by road and rail to transport the high-level waste to the proposed 50-billion-dollar repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) of tunnels in Yucca’s volcanic tuff could hold 77,000 tons (70,000 metric tons) of waste. DOE has judged the site to be “scientifically sound,” and President Bush approved it earlier this year. Hotly disagreeing, the state of Nevada exercised its right to veto, which Congress can override. Even with a go-ahead, DOE must prove the Yucca facility will meet EPA requirements that radiation be safely contained for 10,000 years.

Not building the Yucca Mountain Repository leaves this waste stored in hundreds of different locations none of which comes close to the security and safety of Yucca Mountain. Jaczbo and Obama are placing Americans unecessarily at great risk because of their political fealty to special interests.

The facility has been declared safe to contain waste for at least 10,000 years. None of the existing waste sites is as safe as Yucca will be 10,000 years from now.

You know, all this wouldn’t be necessary if we developed travelling wave nuclear reactors. No moving parts. Sealed for 60 years. No refueling. Run on depleted uranium. Small, buried, and contained. 300-1000 MWe of power.

Another 50 year old concept that might or might not prove practical at least 20-30 years from now.

Meanwhile what should we do with the 50 million tons of radioactive waste and over 90 million gallons that now exist and are stored in what scientists tell us are unacceptable conditions in hundreds of sites accross the country? Even if TWRs were available today the vast majority of this waste would remain with no safe place to store it.

Your suggestion is that we ignore the current problem and divert our attention to a theoretical easing possible in 20-30 years; if then. This is not a solution. It is, at best, a fond hope of a possible minimal solution some time in the future.

Now, wouldn’t the oil and gas a coal industry just love to see those puppies come along?

Building wind and solar ensure that we will need fossil fuel forever. Unless nuclear is used there will not be any substantial reduction in fossil fuels used in electrical production.

Actually oil is the only problem and nothing this administration is pushing does anything but keep us dependent on more and more expensive foreign oil. We have all the coal we need for clean coal to generate affordable power. We have all the natural gas we need. We have enough natural gas to reduce our oil usage by 40%. It is clean , domestic and is low in cost. NG can reduce deisel fuel greenhouse gases by 95%. In cars, it can reduce carbon dioxide by over 25% and is virtually pollution free. The response to the good news of natural gas supplies by this administration.......lets have an inquiry and see if we can stop it somehow.

Wind and solar are obstacles to solving our energy problems. Ethanol / biofuels are recognized even by environmentalists as pollution creators; they are also hugely expensive and drive up the cost of food.

Nothing this administration has done or is proposing will address the real problem which is importing oil. Everything they have done or propose is making the problem worse and energy more expensive. Our energy problem is political. The answer to our energy problem is new leaders.

Well I see politico's worst serial liar is treadimg carefully, but still spreading disinformation....

Ask yourself what group has the most to lose if our energy problems are solved?

The oil and gas companies is the obvious glaring answer, the big money players who actually get laws passed written by their lobbyists. We've had the same exact problems for decades, anyone remember the oil embargo of the 70's? So for someone to suggest this is all The Obama Administrations fault is farcical buffoonery...

This Administration has done no better and no worse than any other. The article up for debate illustrates the type of demagoguery we've come to expect from career politicians who specialize is doing nothing but lining their own pockets with taxpayer dollars, the republicans should quit posturing and put forward some legislation that could help jump start the economy.

No one knows what will happen in the next 10 years let alone what will happen in the next 10,000, so how is it that governmental overreach should be tolerated in order to force Nevadans to store the most toxic substance ever known to mankind?

Thorium fueled nuclear reactors which produce 99% less waste than uranium, could provide safe clean power for a thousand years with the fuel available inside of the United States. Thorium was initially under consideration as a fuel source for small portable reactors in long range bombers, which raises the possibility of continuing along those lines of development as well... But more to the point at hand, thorium reactors can't melt down ( utilizing Carlos Rubbia's ADS ), the little waste they do produce has a half life of 200 years, instead of 200,000, and they can actually burn our current stockpiles of nuclear waste! Harry Reid should be trying to build the first thorium reactors in Nevada, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

Now of course some haters will immediately jump up and down saying this won't work so we shouldn't even try... the U.S. taxpayer is going to spend a fortune on this anyway so why not come up with a real, long term solution instead of just kicking this toxic, deadly can down the road for the next 200 generations of Americans to deal with?

Now of course some haters will immediately jump up and down saying this won't work so we shouldn't even try...

Of course if you knew anything at all about thorium reactors you would know that it has been tried many times over the 60 years that the idea has been in existence. ......and they would know that there is a plant running right now in India, and others have run in the US, Russia and a handful of other countries. It is nothing new and it is nothing that has proved practical in 60 years of trying.

Some people have very little knowledge of this technology and have adopted it as an answer to all our problems while knowing very little. They are like the Truthers or Birthers and like to think they know a big secret that not many other people know. A carryover from their schoolyard days, no doubt.

Like a dog with a bone, no amount of reason will get them to let go. Once bitten they hang on to this bone for dear life.

The politics of the decision to abandon the nearly completed Yucca Flats storage facility have absoutely nothing to do with science or engineering, and everyhting to do with crass politics.

1. A majority of Democrats oppose nuclear energy, and by opposing a satisfactory storage facility, they hope to bring the industry to a standstill. In the mean time, temporary on-site nuclear waste storage facilities that were desgined for 5 to 10 years, are 20 to 25 years past their desgin date.

2. Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) may or may not share the anti-nuclear predilections of his fellow Democrats, but he certainly knows how to demagogue an issue for his political benefit. Publicly exaggerating the possible risks of Yucca Flats and opposing its operation has been poltical gold to Reid, and has directly contributed to the reelection of an otherwise very mediocre senator.

3. The Obama Administration is trying to have it both ways. The President publicly supports nuclear power as an alternative energy source, while his appointees lie about the availability of viable storage plans. Other storage plans? They have none, and for many of them, this folds back into item No. 1 above.

How does this utlimately get resolved? Sadly, I fear that it will take a very public failure of one of the aging on-site nuclear waste storage facilties and the death or irradiation of some of our citizens before we will be able to get our Congress critters to do the right thing and open Yucca Flats. Even then, certain Democrats will attempt to use such a failure to their political advantage in shuttering our nation's nuclear generating plants.

This matter has to be one of the greatest political travisties of this decade. I, for one am discusted! How can two politicians be allowed to shape the decision making of the nuclear regulitory commission and be allowed to play political rulette with the future and safety of so many Americans?

Their actions are totally wrong and investigations and remedial actions are required. No congress should allow this gross miscarage of due process when thousands of tonnes of highly toxic radioactive waste continues to pileup at every nuclear site.This is not a matter that future generations need to deal with. No more studies of delays are acceptable!

What is happening with Yucca mt. is wrong! This is not a political matter its one of safety of millions of AmericansThe facility must be licensed and placed in service, Then initiate the additional studies and parallel in, additional efforts, to resolve the serious waste matter Perhaps even break the monoply for fuel rod manifacture and establish rod reprocessing to help resolve the hugh pileup of spent fuel rods. But do not lockstep the resolutions in the interum and permit nothing to happen..

Two serious wrongs are evident from this 1) That government officials are able to directly influence the mandates of the nuclear regulitory commision which could result in the potential for serious harm to thousands of Americans that believe that someone is responsible to safeguard their safety regarding nuclear matters..and 2) The NRC does not have nuclear safety as a serious concern. Both of which are totally turning me off from any support of either.

If some of the serial liars who post on politico would stop lying and post some real data they might point out that republicans, democrats and the White House just approved 36 billion dollars in subsidies for nuclear power, that is in addition to the 150 billion U.S. taxpayer funded subsidies they have already received over the years and uranium fueled nuclear reactors are still not a viable cost effective power source!

But the serial liars won't ever mention the fact that when coupled with the impossibilities of safe disposal of radioactive uranium waste with a half life of 200,000 years makes uranium fueled nuclear power a cruel joke paid for by the American people.

So would anyone care to guess how much U.S. taxpayer subsidized funding thorium fueled reactor technology has gotten in the last 40 years?

If some of the serial liars who post on politico would stop lying and post some real data

The real data is that listening to Obama is not the same as watching what he does. The facts about the Yucca Repository is that it was stopped by Obama in hs first executive order leaving the country with no suitable or safe way to dispose of or store radioactive waste.

Some ill informed or dishonest people; such as yourself, may claim that despite litigation of over 10 years and over $4 billion spent where the plan and science behind this repository were proven safe beyond any reasonable doubt and will be for 10,000 years, say they know better.

Once bitten / workinman, you keep echoing the same nonsense about how we should disregard all this and build thorium reactors rejecting the fact that this is a technology that has not been proven in 60 years of trying and by all expert opinion would take 20 to 30 years to implement, if proven feasible.

The need for a repository is even proclaimed by president Obama who wants to start all over with a search for a new repository demanding that Yucca Mountain not be considered. Could there be any evidence more condemning of his political decision against the best interests of the country?

Your ideas are impractical, your attitude is rude and unintelligent. It is a good thing you are not in any position to make any decisions about going forward with any energy program. As awful as the president's plans are, yours are worse. The sum total of your arguements are that everyone that disagrees with you is a liar. You are an obnoxious troll who has been thrown off these posts before and should never have been let back on.